by Eugène Sue
None of these details had escaped the notice of Henri David, who had had a wide experience with his kind, and his heart sank within him as he said to himself:
“Poor boy! to feel the pangs of hatred so early, for I cannot doubt that it is hatred he feels for that other lad on the handsome black horse! But what can be the cause of it?”
Henri David was asking himself this question when the little contretemps in which the old work-horse had played such a prominent part occurred.
On seeing his horse beaten, Frederick’s face became terrible. His eyes dilated with anger, and, with a cry of rage, he would in his blind fury have precipitated himself from the window to run after the marquis, if he had not been prevented by David, who seized him about the waist.
The surprise this occasioned recalled Frederick to himself, but, recovering a little from his astonishment, he demanded, in a voice trembling with anger:
“Who are you, monsieur, and why do you touch me?”
“You were leaning so far out of the window, my boy, that I feared you would fall,” replied David, gently. “I wanted to prevent such a calamity.”
“Who told you it would be a calamity?” retorted the youth.
Then turning abruptly away, he threw himself in an armchair, buried his face in his hands, and began to weep.
David’s interest and curiosity were becoming more and more excited as he gazed with tender compassion at this unfortunate youth who seemed now as utterly crushed as he had been violently excited a short time before.
Suddenly the door opened, and Madame Bastien appeared, accompanied by the doctor.
“Where is my son?” asked Marie, glancing around the room, without even seeing David.
Madame Bastien could not see her son, the armchair in which he had thrown himself being concealed by the door that had been thrown open.
On seeing this beautiful young woman, who looked scarcely twenty, as we have said before, and whose features bore such a striking resemblance to Frederick’s, David remained for a moment speechless with surprise and admiration, to which was added a profound interest when he learned that this was the mother of the youth for whom he already felt such a sincere compassion.
“Where is my son?” repeated Madame Bastien, advancing farther into the room and gazing around her with evident anxiety.
“The poor child is there,” said David, in a low tone, at the same time motioning the anxious parent to look behind the door.
There was so much sympathy and kindness in David’s face as well as in the tone in which he uttered the words, that though Marie had been astonished at first at the sight of the stranger, she said to him now as if she had known him always:
“Good Heavens! what is the matter? Has anything happened to him?”
“Ah, mother,” suddenly replied the youth, who had taken advantage of the moment during which he had been hidden from Madame Bastien’s sight to wipe away his tears. Then bowing with a distrait air to Doctor Dufour, whom he had always treated with such affectionate cordiality before, Frederick approached his mother and said:
“Come, mother, let us go.”
“Frederick,” exclaimed Marie, seizing her son’s hands and anxiously scrutinising his features, “Frederick, you have been weeping.”
“No,” he responded, stamping his foot impatiently, and roughly disengaging his hands from his mother’s grasp. “Come, let us go, I say.”
“But he has been weeping, has he not, monsieur?” again turning to David with a half-questioning, half-frightened air.
“Well, yes, I have been weeping,” replied Frederick, with a sarcastic smile, “weeping for gratitude, for this gentleman here,” pointing to David, “prevented me from falling out of the window. Now, mother, you know all. Come, let us go.”
And Frederick turned abruptly toward the door.
Doctor Dufour, no less surprised and grieved than Madame Bastien, turned to David.
“My friend, what does this mean?” he asked.
“Monsieur,” added Marie, also turning to the doctor’s friend, embarrassed and distressed at the poor opinion this stranger must have formed of Frederick, “I have no idea what my son means. I do not know what has happened, but I must beg you, monsieur, to excuse him.”
“It is I who should ask to be excused, madame,” replied David, with a kindly smile. “Seeing your son leaning imprudently far out of the window just now, I made the mistake of treating him like a schoolboy. He is proud of his sixteen summers, as he should be, for at that age,” continued David, with gentle gravity, “one is almost a man, and must fully understand and appreciate all the charm and happiness of a mother’s love.”
“Monsieur!” exclaimed Frederick, impetuously, his nostrils quivering with anger, and a deep flush suffusing his pale face, “I need no lesson from you.”
And turning on his heel, he left the room.
“Frederick!” cried Marie, reproachfully, but her son was gone; so turning her lovely face, down which tears were now streaming, to David, she said, with touching artlessness:
“Ah, monsieur, I must again ask your pardon. Your kind words lead me to hope that you will understand my regret, and that you will not blame my unhappy son too severely.”
“He is evidently suffering, and should be pitied and soothed,” replied David, sympathisingly. “When I first saw him I was startled by his pallor and the drawn appearance of his features. But he has gone, madame, and I would advise you not to leave him by himself.”
“Come, madame, come at once,” said Doctor Dufour, offering his arm to Madame Bastien, and the latter, divided between the surprise the stranger’s kindness excited and the intense anxiety she felt in regard to her son, left the room precipitately in company with the doctor to overtake Frederick.
On being left alone, David walked to the window. A moment afterward, he saw Madame Bastien come out of the house with her handkerchief to her eyes and leaning on the doctor, and step into the shabby little vehicle in which Frederick had already seated himself amid the laughs and sneers of the crowd that lingered on the mall, and that had witnessed the old work-horse’s misadventure.
“That old nag won’t forget the lesson the young marquis gave him for some time, I’ll be bound,” remarked one lounger.
“Wasn’t he a sight when he planted himself with that old rattletrap of a chaise right in the midst of our young marquis’s fine carriages?” remarked another.
“Yes, the old plug won’t forget St. Hubert’s Day in a hurry, I guess,” added a third.
“Nor shall I forget it,” muttered Frederick, trembling with rage.
At that moment the doctor assisted Madame Bastien into the vehicle, and Frederick, exasperated by the coarse jests he had just overheard, struck the innocent cause of all this commotion a furious blow, and the poor old horse, unused to such treatment, started off almost on a run.
In vain Madame Bastien implored her son to moderate the animal’s pace. Several persons narrowly escaped being run over. A child who was slow in getting out of the way received a cut of the whip from Frederick, and whirling rapidly around the corner at the end of the mall, the chaise disappeared from sight amid the jeers and execrations of the angry crowd.
CHAPTER IX.
AFTER HE HAD escorted Marie to her carriage Doctor Dufour reëntered the house and found his friend still standing thoughtfully by the window.
On hearing the door open and close, David awoke from his reverie and turned toward the doctor, who, thinking of the painful scene which they had just witnessed, exclaimed, referring of course to Madame Bastien:
“Poor woman! poor woman!”
“The young woman does indeed seem greatly to be pitied,” remarked David.
“Far more than you think, for she lives only for her son; so you can judge how she must suffer.”
“Her son? Why, I thought he was her brother. She doesn’t look a day over twenty. She must have married very young.”
“At the age of fifteen.”
“And
how beautiful she is!” remarked Henri, after a moment’s silence. “Her loveliness, too, is of an unusual type, — the at once virginal and maternal beauty that gives Raphael’s virgin mothers such a divine character.”
“Virgin mothers! The words are peculiarly appropriate in this connection. I will tell you Madame Bastien’s story. I feel sure that it will interest you.”
“You are right, my friend. It will give me food for thought during my travels.”
“M. Fierval,” began the doctor, “was the only son of a well-to-do banker of Angers; but several unfortunate speculations involved him deeply, financially. Among his business friends was a real estate agent named Jacques Bastien, who was a native of this town and the son of a notary. When M. Fierval became embarrassed, Bastien, who had considerable ready money, gave him valuable pecuniary assistance. Marie was fifteen at the time, beautiful, and, like nearly all the daughters of thrifty provincials, brought up like a sort of upper servant in the house.”
“What you say amazes me. Madame Bastien’s manners are so refined. She has such an air of distinction—”
“In short, you see nothing to indicate any lack of early education in her.”
“Quite the contrary.”
“You are right; but you would not be so much surprised if you had witnessed the numerous metamorphoses in Madame Bastien that I have. Though she was so young she made a sufficiently deep impression upon our real estate man for him to come to me one day, and say:
“‘I want to do a very foolish thing, that is to marry a young girl, but what makes the thing a little less idiotic, perhaps, is that the girl I have in view, though extremely pretty, has very little education, though she is a capital housewife. She goes to market with her father’s cook, makes delicious pickles and preserves, and hasn’t her equal in mending and darning.’ Six weeks afterward, Marie, in spite of her aversion, and in spite of her tears and entreaties, yielded to her father’s inexorable will, and became Madame Bastien.”
“Was Bastien himself aware of the repugnance he inspired?”
“Perfectly; and this repugnance, by the way, was only too well justified, for Bastien, who was then forty-two years old, was as ugly as I am, to say the least, but had the constitution of a bull, — a sort of Farnese Hercules he was, in short, — though much more inclined to embonpoint, as he is an immense eater, and not at all cleanly in his personal habits. So much for him physically. Mentally, he is coarse, ignorant, arrogant, and bigoted, insufferably proud of the money he has amassed. Strongly inclined to avarice, he thinks he is treating his wife very liberally by allowing her one servant, a gardener, who acts as a Jack-of-all-trades on the place, and an old work-horse to take her to town now and then. The only good thing about Bastien is that his business keeps him away about three-quarters of the time, for he buys large tracts of land all over the country, and, after dividing them up, sells these subdivisions to small farmers. When he does return to his present home, a farm which proved a poor investment, and which he has been unable to dispose of, he devotes his time to making as much money out of it as he can, getting up at sunrise to watch his crops put in, and returning only at night to sup voraciously, drink like a fish, and fall into a drunken sleep.”
“You are right, Pierre, this poor woman is much more unfortunate than I supposed. What a husband for such a charming creature! But men like this Bastien, who are endowed with the appetites of the brute combined with the instinct of rapacity, are at least excessively fond of their wives and their young. M. Bastien at least loves his wife and son, does he not?”
“As for his wife, your comparison of a virgin mother was singularly appropriate, as I remarked a few minutes ago. A day or two after his marriage, Bastien, who has always persecuted me with his confidences, said, sullenly: ‘If I were to yield to that prudish wife of mine I should remain a bachelor husband all the rest of my life.’ And it would seem that he has been obliged to, for, alluding to his son, he remarked one day, ‘It is a good thing for me I had a child when I did, but for that I should never have had one.’ In his anger at finding himself rebuffed, he tried to punish poor Marie for the repugnance he had inspired, but which he has been entirely unable to overcome, though he has resorted to brutality, to violence, and even to blows; for when this man is intoxicated he has not the slightest control over himself.”
“Why, this is infamous!”
“Yes; and when I indignantly reproached him, he said: ‘Nonsense. She is my wife, and the law is on my side. I didn’t marry to remain a bachelor, and no slip of a girl like that is going to get the better of me.’ And yet he has had to yield, for brute force cannot overcome a woman’s aversion and loathing, particularly when the woman is endowed with remarkable strength of will like Marie Bastien. At first he intended to live in Blois, but his wife’s resistance changed his plans. ‘If this is the way she is going to act,’ he said to me one day, ‘she shall pay dearly for it. I have a farm near Pont Brillant. She shall live there alone on one hundred francs a month.’ And he was as good as his word. Marie accepted the pinched and lonely life Bastien imposed upon her with courage and resignation, though Bastien did his best to make her existence as miserable as possible, until he learned that she was enceinte. After that he became a little more lenient, for though he still left Marie at the farm, he allowed her to make a few inexpensive changes, which, thanks to Madame Bastien’s good taste, have quite transformed the abode. The amiability and many virtues of his charming wife seem to have wrought some slight improvement in Bastien, for though he is still coarse, he seems to be rather less of a brute, and to have decided to make the best of his life of a bachelor husband. ‘Well, doctor, I was born lucky after all,’ he remarked to me, not very long ago. ‘My wife is living, and I am not sorry for it on the whole. She is sweet-tempered and patient and economical, and I never give her a penny except for household expenses, yet she seems perfectly contented. She never sets foot off the farm, and seems to think only of her son. On the other hand, if my wife should die I should not be inconsolable, for, as you must understand yourself, to be a married man and yet have to lead a bachelor life has its objections as well as being very expensive; so whether my wife lives or dies I have no cause to complain. That was what I meant when I told you just now that I was really born lucky, after all.’”
“And his son, does he seem to really care anything about him?” inquired Henri, more and more interested.
“Bastien is one of those fathers who consider that a parent should always be crabbed and angry and fault-finding, so, during his rare sojourns at the farm, where he evinces more interest in his cattle than in his son, he always finds a means of incensing his child against him. The natural result of all this is that Bastien has no place in the lives of his wife and son. And, speaking of Frederick’s education, I must tell you another of those admirable metamorphoses that maternal love has effected in Madame Bastien.”
“Pray do, Pierre,” said Henri, earnestly. “You have no idea how much this interests me.”
“Reared as I have described, and married at the age of fifteen,” continued the doctor, “Marie Bastien had received a very imperfect education, though she was really endowed with an unusual amount of intellectual ability. But when she became a mother, realising the importance of the duties devolving upon her, Marie, inconsolable at her ignorance, resolved to acquire in four or five years all the knowledge necessary to enable her to undertake her child’s education, which she was determined to entrust to no one else.”
“And this resolve?” inquired David.
“Was faithfully carried out. When she first broached the subject to Bastien he scoffed at the idea, but when Marie told him that she was determined not to be separated from her son, and reminded him how expensive it would be to have teachers come out to the farm from Pont Brillant and later from Blois, Bastien concluded that his wife might be right, after all, and consented to the arrangement. Fortunately Marie found in a young Englishwoman a treasure of knowledge, intelligence, and kindheartedness
. Miss Harriet, for that was her name, appreciating and admiring this rare example of maternal devotion, devoted herself body and soul to her mission, and, ably assisted by the natural talent and untiring industry of her pupil, in four years she had imparted to the young mother a thorough acquaintance with history, geography, and literature. Madame Bastien had also become a sufficiently good musician to teach her son music. She had also acquired a fair knowledge of the English language, a sufficient knowledge of drawing to be able to teach Frederick to draw from nature. He profited wonderfully well by these lessons, for few boys of his age are equally far advanced or so thoroughly grounded, and his mother certainly had good cause to feel proud of the effects both of her training and teaching, when she suddenly perceived a strange change in him.”
The doctor was here interrupted by the entrance of the old servant, who, addressing her master, said:
“Monsieur, I came to warn you that the diligence for Nantes will pass at six o’clock, and they have come for M. David’s baggage.”
“Very well, they can take it, and will you ask them to be good enough to inform me when the diligence arrives?”
“Yes, M. David.” Then, with an expression of artless regret, she added:
“Is it really true that you are going to leave us, M. David? Is it possible that you are going to let your friend go?” she added, turning to the doctor.
“Do you hear that?” asked M. Dufour, smiling sadly. “I am not the only person who regrets your departure, you see.”
CHAPTER X.
AFTER THE SERVANT’S departure, Henri David, still under the painful impression which his friend’s revelations on the subject of Marie Bastien had produced, remained silent for several minutes.
Doctor Dufour, too, was silent and thoughtful, for the servant’s announcement had reminded him that he was soon to be separated from his dearest friend, perhaps for years.